Gill, Shaw tons guide India U-19 to series-clinching win

Of the few things that went England's way on Monday (February 6), the most prominent was their skipper Matthew Fisher's guess when the coin was tossed up by Himanshu Rana, his counterpart. But it is unlikely that he would have expected the kind of ruthless response from the hosts when he invited them to bat first at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium.

Shubham Gill, who came into the fourth Youth One-Dayer at the back of a match-winning 138*, carried forward the momentum from the previous contest by adding 160 more runs to help India to an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series. The 17-year old from Firozpur, who is slowly asserting himself into the spotlight in youth cricket, combined with Prithvi Shaw - a player as young, but used to the attention for much longer - to humiliate the English attack. The right-handed duo partnered and partied their way to a 231-run stand in only 27.1 overs. As it turned out, their contribution for the second wicket was 79 runs more than what all England batsmen combined could muster.

India began steady with Rana and Gill structuring an 83-run stand for the opening wicket, before the former fell to Liam Patterson-White. Nonetheless, once Shaw joined Gill in the middle, the game drifted away from England in such a way that it never happened to come back to them, without even a glimmer of hope. Gill plundered 23 boundaries, Shaw added 12 more. If Gill struck a six, Shaw smacked two. By the time both the batsmen departed, in a space of four deliveries, India were sitting pretty on 315 for 3 with 41 more balls remaining for the end of the innings. Abhishek Sharma and Mayank Rawat drove their innings on the top gear, and added 24 and 14 off 10 deliveries respectively. In a bid to up the run-rate, India lost a few wickets in the death overs to eventually finish with 382 for 9.

If the daunting target wasn't enough to put England on the backfoot, the loss of early wickets did enough damage to put the challenge off. The top four batsmen - Harry Brook (0), Tom Banton (6), George Bartlett (0) and Delray Rawlins (9) returned to the pavilion with only 41 runs on the board.

Wicketkeeper Ollie Pope played a useful hand in three small partnerships and brought up his half-century, but could do little apart from saving the tourists from the embarrassment of getting bundled out for less than 100. Will Jacks, who had combined with Pope for a 48-run stand for the sixth wicket, went on to add a few more crucial runs, before getting dismissed by Vivekanand Tiwari on 44.

Barring the two, there was hardly any noteworthy contribution from the rest of the batsmen as England crumbled for 152. Kamlesh Nagarkoti bagged four, Tiwari snared three as India won by 230 runs.